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The mix-up stemmed from the fact that "nok" is the Thai word for bird.

Within hours of the incident, Nok Air issued a statement on Twitter to explain that none of its fleet had been involved.

"We would like to clarify that Nok Air did not clip another aircraft today," it said. "The other aircraft suffered a bird (real ones) strike."

The aircraft, an Airbus A320-200, which was carrying 151 passengers from Bangkok to the southern city of Nakhon Si Thammarat, landed safely, although the impact left "a scratch" on the edge of the left wing, Thai AirAsia – a subsidiary of Malaysian airline AirAsia - said in a statement.

Nok Air, founded in 2004, is the budget arm of Thai Airways. It is not the only Asian airline with an amusing and confusing name - All Nippon Airways' low-cost brand was renamed Vanilla Air last year, its chiefs apparently unaware of the bland and plain associations with the slang usage of "vanilla" in the West.